As many of our readers know, direct service in urban education is difficult work. Teachers and other school staff serve many roles, from educator to social worker to surrogate-parent. It takes an incredible amount of passion and patience to reach the most hardened and defeated students, whose lives have been so difficult that putting up barriers and developing negative behaviors are the only way they have coped. Now imagine the type of person it takes to reach an entire school full of students whose needs are so great that the district could not meet them. Matt Fiteny, director of instruction at the Maya Angelou Young Adult Learning Center (YALC), is one of those people. A Houston native, Matt began his career working with populations outside of the mainstream while in college in San Francisco. He has since dedicated his career to helping those without champions. Originally focused on social stratification (the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality) and helping the homeless meet basic needs, he eventually became a teacher. After getting his graduate degree at Harvard in educational leadership, Matt moved to DC in 2009 to join the Maya Angelou team and develop the YALC.

A book that chronicles the history of the District of Columbia has turned out to be a powerful tool for engaging teens in the controversial past of the nation’s capital.Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C.,written by long-time journalists Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood, examines the complicated mayoral tenure of civil rights activist and drug abuser Marion Barry during the 1980s to mid-1990s. The book, originally published in 1994, was recently released as an e-book and includes a new afterword on what’s changed in the District in the last 20 years. Teachers and students came out this month to participate in a book discussion hosted by the Center for Inspired Teaching, where they engaged with the authors and shared their own classroom experiences around Dream City. Bill Stevens, a history teacher at the SEED School in southeast DC, said Barry’s rule struck a personal chord with some of his students. "One of my students realized his relative's first job was with Marion Barry," said Stevens. His students were all the more engaged in class during Dream City discussions, he added, as they discovered their own historical connections to the city.

In March, when Indiana became the first state to drop the Common Core State Standards, supporters of the reform became concerned the political ground was shifting under their feet. The conventional wisdom is that moderates broadly support the reforms while those on the far left and right stand opposed, but the reality is far more complicated and murky. A pair of recent polls offer valuable lessons about the future of the standards:

Creating a national curriculum for social students and science is an extraordinary challenge. Both are rich with controversial curriculum debates that strike at a foundational political disagreement over the role of state and the federal government. But it’s a debate worth having, if we’re to create an education system that encourages students to think critically and analytically about the world around them. The Common Core State Standards already drive much of this much-needed and long-overdue change, forcing a depth-over-breadth approach to instruction in reading, writing, and math. But to be meaningful and fully-effective, this approach must extend beyond those skill standards and into content areas like social studies and science.

about

YEP-DC is a nonpartisan group of education professionals who work in research, policy, and practice – and even outside of education. The views expressed here are only those of the attributed author, not YEP-DC. This blog aims to provide a forum for our group’s varied opinions. It also serves as an opportunity for many more professionals in DC and beyond to participate in the ongoing education conversation. We hope you chime in, but we ask that you do so in a considerate, respectful manner. We reserve the right to modify or delete any content or comments. For any more information or for an opportunity to blog, contact us via one of the methods below.

Bloggers

MONICA GRAY is co-founder & president of DreamWakers, an edtech nonprofit. She writes on education innovation and poverty.

LYDIA HALL is a legislative aide in the U.S. House of Representatives, where she works on education, civil rights, and other issues. Lydia is interested in helping to bridge the gap between Capitol Hill and the classroom.

MOSES PALACIOS is an advocate for student rights and works as a Research Manager for the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) - a coalition of urban school districts across the nation. He writes on issues regarding the children of immigrants and students learning English as a second language. His views are his own and not representative of CGCS.

PATRICIA RUANE is aresearch associate at an education nonprofit. She is an editor of Recess. ​LESLIE WELSH is a high school social studies teacher in DC. She is an editor of Recess.